Mechanic quizzed for fatal air crash

Police and investigators probing Wednesday's deadly plane crash in Madrid have questioned the mechanic who cleared the plane for takeoff after tending to a minor mechanical problem, the airline said yesterday.

Spanair said the mechanic dealt with a problem in an air temperature gauge that forced the pilot to abandon a first attempt to take off. About an hour later, when the MD-82 finally did take off, it crashed near the end of the runway, burning and largely disintegrating. A total of 153 of the 172 people aboard were killed.

The newspaper El Pais quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation as saying that during two sessions of testimony on Friday - first with police and then with crash investigators - the mechanic insisted that the gauge malfunction was a minor glitch which had nothing to do with the crash.